This compilation of information would become the Catalogue Raisonne, a resource that details all of Andy Warhol’s prints, including how many of the different types of prints are in circulation. With so many works being produced, it was important to keep track of all the pieces, sizes, cataloguing information, and color variations that Warhol used in all his works. There were copies made that Warhol kept for himself, copies that the printer kept, and the regular edition that Warhol would sell. These would later be known as Trial Proofs – unique color variations of each print. The works that Warhol did not end up using for his regular edition prints, he would number and sign. Layering the inks in different ways, and using different hues altogether. Once those were created, they would experiment with different color combinations for the image. This would create the actual plates that each color of ink would run off of. When Warhol came up with an idea for a work, he or one of his printers would “burn” the screens of the photograph he wanted to use in a special machine. While screenprinting was at first seen as a mechanic method that was too industrial to be considered a veritable generator of art, the creation of each screenprint yields a unique copy every time. What really matters is his deep belief in appropriation, his deep belief in the retread.A Closer Look Into Warhol’s Catalogue Raisonne. And that’s what makes him more than his subject matter, more than all the clichés about pop art. And that’s what Warhol latches onto and turns into kind of the heart of his entire practice as an artist. So it starts out at the very beginning of the modern Western tradition as being about appropriation. That it begins around 1500, when a bunch of people said: “You know those religious pictures, those wonderful altar pieces that are meant to please God? How about if we take them out of the religious context and just look at them because we’re interested in them, we want to talk about them, we can’t figure them out?” That’s what fine art is all about. Gopnik: Yeah, I make a claim - that, I guess, is a little bit on the radical side - that appropriation is actually at the heart of the entire Western notion of fine art. But the retreading is throughout art, you’ve pointed this out. And that’s what really makes Warhol matter, this notion of appropriation.īrancaccio: That’s why the picture matters. But it matters a whole lot because by virtue of being a retread, it was an appropriation in the first place. He would have been appalled - not at the $200 million number, but at all the clichés that have been pulled out for this dead painting, this retread. They’ve pulled out all the clichés: that it’s an “untouchable image that transcends time and place.” Those are just the kind of clichés that Warhol just hated. He called these paintings, where he did retreads of his earlier, really innovative pictures, he called them “dead paintings.” So I think that this is actually a really great, important picture, and actually may deserve the $200 million dollars that Christie’s thinks it may get - but I don’t think this painting matters for any of the reasons that Christie’s is saying. No?īlake Gopnik: Well, I guess you might call it that, except for the fact that Warhol had already done his Marilyns two years earlier, so I don’t think you can call it innovative in the normal sense, at least. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.ĭavid Brancaccio: I see the auction house is calling this an innovative portrait of Marilyn Monroe. And that’s what really makes Warhol matter, this notion of appropriation.” “But it matters a whole lot because by virtue of being a retread, it was an appropriation in the first place. “Warhol had already done his Marilyns two years earlier - so I don’t think you can call it innovative in the normal sense, at least,” said Gopnik. Projecting a sale price of $200 million, auction house Christie’s has compared Warhol’s 1964 “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” to da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” and Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus,” calling it “one of the greatest paintings of all time.”Īrt critic Blake Gopnik told Marketplace’s David Brancaccio that the portrait is important, but for a different reason. Next week an Andy Warhol silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe could become the most expensive 20 th-century artwork to sell at auction. Update (5/10/22): Andy Warhol’s “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” sold for $195 million on Monday, making the portrait of Marilyn Monroe the most expensive work by a U.S.
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